going to bed

He didn't know which bedroom to go to.

The hallway at the top of the stairs stretched before him like a choice he wasn't prepared to make. To the left: the master bedroom, where they'd slept together for fifteen years. To the right: the guest room, Angela's room, where his—her—clothes hung in the closet and the bed was still made with hospital corners from when they'd set it up that afternoon.

"Steve," Pam said quietly from the top of the landing, and he turned to face her. She was already in her nightgown, her face washed clean of makeup, her hair pulled back in a way that made her look young and fragile. "I'm not ready. To sleep together, I mean. Not yet."

"I know," he said, even though some part of him had been hoping. Hoping for what, exactly, he wasn't sure. Comfort, maybe. The intimacy of her body next to his, even if they weren't touching in any sexual way. Just the presence of her, familiar and warm.

"It's not you," Pam said, and the cliché almost made him laugh. Except she continued: "It's that every time I look at you, I see my sister. And when I'm alone, I can almost forget that. But if I'm lying in the dark next to you, if I have to feel you breathing beside me..." Her voice cracked. "I don't think I can do it. Not right now."

Steve understood. He hated it, but he understood. The body was wrong. The context was wrong. Everything was wrong.

"Okay," he said.

She reached out and pulled him into a hug, and he felt the softness of her against him—his wife's familiar shape, her familiar warmth. But when she pulled away, she didn't meet his eyes.

"Good night," she said, and disappeared into the master bedroom, closing the door gently behind her.

Steve stood alone in the hallway for a long moment, then turned and walked to the guest room. To Angela's room. To his room now.

He lay in the bed that still smelled faintly of newness and plastic, and tried to will himself to sleep. But his body wouldn't cooperate.

There was an agitation in his—her—nerves, a restlessness that felt almost electric. Not quite pain, not quite pleasure, but something caught between the two states. It was like his skin was too tight, like every nerve ending was firing just beneath the surface of consciousness, demanding something he couldn't name.

He tried to breathe through it. Tried the relaxation techniques he'd learned in yoga classes with Pam. But Angela's body didn't want to relax. It wanted something. It needed something.

Steve got out of bed and paced the small room. The restlessness grew more intense, focusing itself into something that felt almost like arousal, but different from anything he'd experienced before. It was deeper, more diffuse. It wasn't centered in any one place; it radiated through his entire nervous system like a low hum that wouldn't stop.

He returned to the bed and lay down again, his breath shallow. His hands, unbidden, began to move across the surface of his—her—body. The nightgown Pam had given him was thin cotton, and beneath it, his new flesh seemed to glow with sensitivity. His fingers found the curve of his hip and the sensation made him gasp. It was like touching a live wire.

His hands moved upward, fingers brushing across the waistband of the underwear beneath the nightgown. The touch sent a jolt through his entire body. He froze, understanding what his body was telling him, and trying desperately to resist.

No. Not here. Not like this. Not alone.

But the need was overwhelming. The restlessness intensified, becoming almost unbearable. Steve lay there, breathing hard, trying to will it away. But it wouldn't go away. It intensified.

He got out of bed and opened the dresser where they'd unpacked Angela's intimate belongings. The drawer seemed to mock him with its contents. He tried to close it, to walk away, but his hand was already reaching in.

The pink dildo was small, elegant, expensive-looking. His fingers closed around it and he felt something shift in his mind. A recognition. An acknowledgment of purpose.

No.

But his body was already moving. Already knowing. His hand wrapped around the toy with a confidence that didn't belong to Steve Meadows. His fingers found the correct angle, the correct grip, with an expertise that made his stomach turn.

He returned to the bed and locked the door—a precaution born from some fragment of Angela's caution—and then pulled off his underwear with movements that were fluid and practiced.

His legs opened. His hands moved. And somewhere between conscious will and **** memory, Steve ceased to exist as a conscious operator and became instead a passenger in his own body.

The dildo entered him and the sensation was so overwhelming that he nearly cried out. He bit his lip hard enough to taste blood, stifling the sound. His body knew what to do with this object. Knew the exact angle, the exact depth, the exact rhythm that would produce maximum pleasure.

It was Angela's knowledge. Angela's body. Angela's sexuality, encoded in nerve and muscle and the deep architecture of the nervous system.

Steve watched from somewhere far away as his—her—hips began to move. The rhythm was not the tentative, exploratory movement of someone new to pleasure, but the confident, deliberate motion of someone who had done this a thousand times. His body drove the dildo in and out with a precision that was horrifying and ecstatic in equal measure.

The pleasure that flooded through him was unlike anything he'd ever experienced. It wasn't localized. It wasn't gentle. It was overwhelming, cascading through every nerve ending in waves of sensation that seemed to build on top of each other, each orgasm bleeding into the next without resolution.

And with each wave came fragments. Images. Sensations that weren't his own.

A hotel room. Expensive sheets. A man's face—not Steve, someone else, someone Angela had wanted. His hands on her breasts. His mouth on her neck. The feeling of being desired, being used, and loving every second of it.

A woman's face in the darkness. Soft hands. A tenderness that Steve—as Steve—had never experienced. The intimate knowledge of what made Angela come, what sounds she made, what she wanted in the deep hours of the morning.

A club, loud and dark. Dancing alone, feeling the weight of eyes on her body, on Angela's body. The intoxication of being watched. The power of knowing that desire surrounded her, that she could have anyone.

The fragments came faster, more intense. Not memories exactly, but imprints. Echoes. Ghost sensations embedded in the tissue itself.

Steve's back arched off the bed. He was close to coming, so close he could taste it, and he tried harder to stifle the sound building in his chest. A moan that wasn't his, wasn't Steve's, was building behind his clenched teeth.

He bit down on his lip, hard, as the orgasm ripped through him. His body convulsed, his hips driving the dildo deeper, harder, and the pleasure was so intense that for a moment he couldn't breathe.

But it didn't stop.

His body, Angela's body, didn't want release. It wanted more. His hand resumed its rhythm immediately after the first orgasm faded, driving back in, finding the angle again, and Steve felt another one building.

No. Stop. This isn't—

But his body had its own plans. The pleasure was too good, too complete, too absolutely right to deny. His fingers found the exact spot that made his—her—entire body sing with sensation. His hips moved with a confidence born not of experience but of inheritance.

Another orgasm, this one hitting even harder than the first. His free hand flew to his mouth, biting down on his knuckles to keep from crying out. He could feel the wetness, the absolute evidence of his body's betrayal, as another wave of pleasure crashed through him.

Still more. His body wanted more.

The rhythm quickened, became almost frantic. The sounds he was making—small, ****, keening—were being muffled by his own clenched teeth. He was crying, he realized. Tears running down his face as his body took what it needed, as Angela's sexuality rose up from the deep places in his nervous system and consumed him completely.

Another orgasm. And another. And another.

Each one pulled fragments of Angela with it. Her voice, laughing. Her taste on someone else's mouth. The feeling of power and helplessness intertwined. The specific, exquisite knowledge of exactly what her body could do, what it craved, what it needed.

By the time the intensity began to fade, Steve was shaking, gasping, utterly spent. His hand fell away from the dildo. His body lay still, trembling in the aftermath of pleasure that had been too complete, too all-consuming, too absolutely right.

He lay there in the darkness, his chest heaving, his new body slick with sweat and other fluids he didn't want to think about. And he understood, with a horror so complete it was almost peaceful, that his body had just taken what he'd been trying to deny it.

His body was Angela's body. And Angela's body remembered exactly what it wanted.

He carefully cleaned himself and the toy, placed it back in the drawer with hands that still trembled slightly, and returned to bed. He pulled the covers over himself, trying to ignore the way his body still hummed with residual pleasure, the way his nerve endings still sang with the echo of sensation.

In the master bedroom down the hall, he knew Pam was awake. Listening. Wondering if she'd heard the sounds he'd tried so desperately to suppress.

He had come alive in Angela's body. And somewhere in that pleasure, some essential part of Steve Meadows had begun to die.